to dry
along with the moose-meat over the fire, wishing to preserve them; but
Sabattis told me that I must skin and cure them, else the hair would
all come off. He observed, that they made tobacco-pouches of the skins
of their ears, putting the two together inside to inside. I asked him
how he got fire; and he produced a little cylindrical box of
friction-matches. He also had flints and steel, and some punk, which
was not dry; I think it was from the yellow birch. "But suppose you
upset, and all these and your powder get wet." "Then," said he, "we
wait till we get to where there is some fire." I produced from my
pocket a little vial, containing matches, stoppled water-tight, and
told him, that, though we were upset, we should still have some dry
matches; at which he stared without saying a word.

We lay awake thus a long while talking, and they gave us the meaning
of many Indian names of lakes and streams in the vicinity,--especially
Tahmunt. I asked the Indian name of Moosehead Lake. Joe answered,
_Sebamook_; Tahmunt pronounced it _Sebemook_. When I asked
what it meant, they answered, Moosehead Lake. At length, getting my
meaning, they alternately repeated the word over to themselves, as a
philologist might,--_Sebamook_,--_Sebamook_,--now and then
comparing notes in Indian; for there was a slight difference in their
dialects; and finally Tahmunt said, "Ugh! I know,"--and he rose up
partly on the moose-hide,--"like as here is a place, and there is a
place," pointing to different parts of the hide, "and you take water
from there and fill this, and it stays here; that is _Sebamook_."
I understood him to mean that it was a reservoir of water which did
not run away, the river coming in on one side and passing out again
near the same place, leaving a permanent bay. Another Indian said,
that it meant Large-Bay Lake, and that _Sebago_ and _Sebec_,
the names of other lakes, were kindred words, meaning large open
water. Joe said that _Seboois_ meant Little River. I observed
their inability, often described, to convey an abstract idea. Having
got the idea, though indistinctly, they groped about in vain for words
with which to express it. Tahmunt thought that the whites called it
Moosehead Lake, because Mount Kineo, which commands it, is shaped like
a moose's head, and that Moose River was so called "because the
mountain points right across the lake to its mouth." John Josselyn,
writing about 1673, says, "Twelve miles from Casco